The Berkeley Beacon

Cathleen Cusachs

Arts Editor

Alongside being the Berkeley Beacon's Arts Editor, Cathleen Cusachs is a sophomore journalism major with a double minor in both photography and post-colonial & global studies.

Originally born in Metairie, Louisiana and raised in Meriden, Connecticut, her involvement with the Beacon began first semester freshman year as a Lifestyle correspondent. Second semester, she joined the staff as Deputy Arts Editor. Cusachs also held the staff position of Limburg Bureau Chief while studying at Emerson's European Center in the Netherlands.

Media contributed

Articles

As one Facebook friend of mine phrased it, the show is “trauma porn.” Its goal was to raise awareness for mental illnesses, but for people with mental illness, all it does is bring back memories they don’t want to remember.

There once was a time when our artwork was autographed with messy handprints slapped on with paint. These days, it’s not actually so different; in the age of social media and constant content creation, personal branding is imperative to artists at Emerson. Instagram users are familiar with the concept of themes, or similarities between posts creating a coherent mosaic of pictures.

In the heady sci-fi flick Arrival, linguist Louise Banks uses her expertise to communicate with strange aliens in an unusual monolithic spacecraft.
Loving tells the true tale of a husband and wife arrested for their marriage in 1958. Their case was taken all the way to the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia, resulting in a federal knockdown of interracial marriage laws.

As a Bachelor of Fine Arts acting major, junior Riley Hillyer was planning on auditioning for Emerson Stage, a requirement that he was happy to fulfill. He was also looking forward to attending the Women’s March in D.C. as an ally.
He can’t do both.

Art inherently reflects the environment it’s in, so it makes sense for recent works on and off campus to talk about timely issues. What is especially notable is the explicit stance some of these artists take on social justice debates. Going into 2017, with a divided nation and controversial president-elect, this trend is only going to continue.

Two years ago, on the University of Oregon campus, two friends set out to make a music video but didn’t know where to look to recruit or build a film crew. This was the light bulb moment for Harry Holmes, the once-cinematographer who’s founding an online networking platform to connect creative people to projects.

The venture is called Emerson Literacy Education and Empowerment Project (eLEEP), and it was founded by Cooke-Jackson and Paul Mihailidis, an associate marketing communication professor, six years ago.

Willa Segar-Reid grew up with two moms in a house of all women who were accepting of their identification of gender nonconforming. When they came to Emerson, they said they sought the same environment, and it was finally achieved this year in the form of a gender neutral suite.

Well is a small village in the province of Limburg, the Netherlands, and is the location of Emerson’s renovated 14th century castle, Kasteel Well, used as their European Center since 1988. Although many service projects such as this were attempted, none were ever successful until now, Powles said.

“Natalia had the idea to do a show about resident advisors, so she called me,” Reid, 31, said in a phone interview. “I will just say there are some more shocking elements from the pilot that were inspired by things I actually had to deal with, and I did not deal with them as gracefully as the RAs in the show do.”

The Bill Bordy Theater opened its doors on April 2 for the final rounds in a co-ed modeling competition that had started a week and a half prior. Freshman Zeke St. John won the contest, along with freshman Chance Liekkiö as the audience favorite choice.

“After doing that show, with just a big mix of people from all majors and people from different schools, it really just showed me if you try hard enough, and you want something bad enough, you can make it happen,” Altschiller said.

“I attended the presentation to gain a larger appreciation of what goes into visual effects when making a movie,” Kirkman-Moriarty said. “The amount of work and the amount of results that they can achieve with visual effects today [is] really jawdropping.”

Junior Alejandro Peña is afraid of death. Truly afraid; he said he can’t fly without being heavily medicated and gets anxious just watching the news. Yet with his latest film, death has become his muse.

The night before Halloween, the Cabaret will become an ancient Greek maze, with a horrifying twist. The annual Campus Center-sponsored haunted house mimics the Labyrinth this year, a mythical trap containing the half-man, half-bull minotaur.

"I like Dragtoberfest because even though it is a competition, it's sort of a chance for people who are curious to try it out, who want to show their talents."
— Duncan Gelder, junior performing arts major